Ciena – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchMon, 19 Mar 2018 22:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1100G, 200G, 400G: Internet’s core is getting fatter to meet our tech planet’s bandwidth demandhttp://gigaom.com/2013/08/16/100g-200g-400g-internets-core-is-getting-fatter-to-meet-our-tech-planets-bandwidth-demand/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/16/100g-200g-400g-internets-core-is-getting-fatter-to-meet-our-tech-planets-bandwidth-demand/#commentsFri, 16 Aug 2013 14:52:34 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=680393Optical networks are getting bigger, beefier and faster — thanks to a slew of new technologies. It has now become commonplace to hear about optical networks, mostly in the Internet’s backbone, supporting speeds of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). And to add some context, in 1990 the state of the art was 2.5 Gbps.

This bulkiness of the backhaul networks is happening because we are spending more of our lives online. Internet access and connectivity are now essential to our daily lives, and there is hardly a part of business which has been left untouched. In my post, “ZipCar, Google, cars and the inevitability of the Internet”, I argued that technologies will influence even the most mundane of industries. Just as most of the planet will develop a silicon heartbeat, networks will act like its nervous system — increasing need for bandwidth.

And, thanks to these 100G deployments, the optical industry has had one of its better quarters in recent memory. According to data released by Infonetics Research, a market research company, the global optical hardware demand during April-to-June 2013 was a whopping $3.3 billion.

What is driving the sales? Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research, points to the demand for 100G, which is now hitting mainstream level deployments.

“WDM [wavelength division multiplexing] spending accelerated dramatically in North America as a result of 100G deployments hitting the ground, and worldwide spending on 100G speeds is tracking close to 15% of all optical spending,” Schmitt adds. “China’s 100G deployments will begin in earnest as the year closes, led by China Mobile, and we’re anticipating more than 5,000 ports of 100G in China alone in 2013.”

The boom in demand for optical has helped Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE become the top three market share leaders (in that order). But that doesn’t mean others aren’t doing well. Ciena(s CIEN) is going to see a big bump from its close relationship with AT&T (s T) and Verizon (s VZ) as those two companies start to accelerate the rollout of 100G technologies. Verizon was early to adopt 100G and deployed its first 100G network route in 2009.

And the networks aren’t stopping at 100G. And if AT&T and Verizon get serious about selling us 100 megabit per seconds connections anytime soon, it won’t be long before those 100G pipes are packed shifting information. Even today, without those fat last mile pipes we are pushing around a lot of data on the Internet and hence the need for speed.

The growing popularity of video streaming and the emergence of more and more connected devices means that our need for bandwidth is going to grow, both in the core (backbone) and access (metro and last-mile) networks. Verizon is doing field trials of a new technology from Ciena that allows it to use specialized software to increase the spectral efficiency of the networks and thus double the capacity of its 100G network. Verizon showed it off as part of a field trial over its 260-mile ultra-long haul network between Boston and New York. The trial was conducted for a month.

The Coherent Optical technology used in this network reduces the amount of amplification necessary to send the optical signals (that carry data) over a greater distance without the additional loss of signal quality. According to Infonetics:

Among survey respondents, by 2015 coherent wavelengths will account for 68% of deployments in the core and 29% in the metro

100G will rise from just 5% of deployed wavelengths in 2012 to 37% in 2015

Not to be outdone, Sprint(s S) has concluded a 400 Gbps trial using Ciena gear. The company conducted this trial in the Silicon Valley area on a live network. Earlier this year, Sprint trialed and deployed a 100 Gbps network (running between Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas) that required no regeneration of optical signal over a distance of 1,304 miles. Sprint is now looking at boosting its network to 400 Gbps, using Ciena’s Coherent Optical technologies.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/16/100g-200g-400g-internets-core-is-getting-fatter-to-meet-our-tech-planets-bandwidth-demand/feed/8The enterprise needs a better network to the cloudhttp://gigaom.com/2012/06/30/the-enterprise-needs-a-better-network-to-the-cloud/
http://gigaom.com/2012/06/30/the-enterprise-needs-a-better-network-to-the-cloud/#commentsSat, 30 Jun 2012 22:00:57 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=538389While much of the networking industry today is focused on improving speeds and feeds inside the data center, we need to recognize the importance of improving the networks that connect enterprise data centers to each other, and to the public cloud. If the industry can deliver an elastic network with programmable performance, then the walls between data centers could effectively disappear.

Trying to overlay cloud services on the same pipe being used for best-effort internet is going to disappoint users, and limit cloud service adoption. Specifically, we need to add speed and intelligence to these networks, and several factors are driving this requirement. For example:

Virtual machine (VM) transfers between data centers are increasingly common

Virtual storage is no longer isolated to a single data center

An increasing number of mission critical enterprise applications being deployed on VMs are moving to the cloud, driving the need for carrier-class network security and performance for workload balancing and reliability.

Adoption of cloud-based infrastructure (IaaS) for workload mobility, collaboration and availability is creating more complicated topology deployments and opportunities for software defined networking.

Let’s imagine a company with a 200 Mbps data connection to the world, which needs to make a server platform change. To do so without shutting down the business in the process, IT staff would like to temporarily move the applications on this server to the public cloud. Let’s assume the total data to transfer would be about 10 terabytes to make this migration happen. However, transferring 10 TB of data over a typical 200 Mbps network connection would take nearly a week, assuming full bandwidth utilization, no re-transmissions and 80 percent utilization. Clearly this company is not going to be able to run this simple workload job over this network service.

This issue is quite debilitating for IT organizations, and is something service providers like Verizon (s vz) have been hearing about from their enterprise customers. In fact, the company just opened a new innovation center dedicated to finding solutions that improve the integration of networks and data center infrastructure.

To make this work, enterprises require new cloud network connectivity options for efficient operations—an intelligent Network-as-a-Service model that uses software defined networking to dynamically provide performance as dictated by the application. In the cloud world, demands on capacity and connectivity are fluid — entirely dependent on businesses’ specific requirements at any given time. The network supporting this environment needs to be as elastic, programmable and, in a sense, “virtualized,” as storage and servers are today.

Using the example above for a 10 TB data transfer, an intelligent network could more easily accommodate these workloads by dynamically expanding to 5 Gbps and completing the job in less than 5 hours without requiring the VM applications to go offline. When the job is done, the network would immediately return to standard levels so that the premium bandwidth is billed only as used.

The fictional company finds this use of the premium network service worthwhile, quite simply, because it makes using the provider cloud practical for this particular workload. On-premise data center capital and operational cost becomes avoidable, replaceable with a time-limited -– and thus net-smaller –- IaaS “rental” expense.

Enterprises and service providers both benefit. Enterprises minimize permanent data center-related costs and reduce return-on-investment risks, while providers attract more workload and demand to their cloud services, which boosts their revenues. More, and more affordable, network when needed is essential to vreate these benefits.

The ability to respond to varying workload demands with performance generated on demand is a key benefit of an intelligent network for the cloud. In addition to dynamic bandwidth, this network must have higher availability, lower latency and greater reliability, as it would be designed for critical infrastructure services. Programmable interfaces into an open cloud networking framework might also be used to adjust for policies, authentication or network events.

This open, programmable networking model can be implemented as a cloud backbone or as a fully integrated cloud and network operation. A single vendor could provide a dynamic packet transport core and data center endpoints. Or multi-vendor switching and transport equipment can be used in the core with data center connect performance optimization and cloud operations at the end points.

Many vendors are adopting an open network philosophy and looking to implement interoperability by using new open protocol standards and application programming interfaces (APIs) with a virtualized network.

With this sort of network, the IT manager will have the freedom to consider resources outside the physical walls of his or her building to be natural extensions of an owned data center. In effect, that IT manager would now have a “data center without walls,” that provides the same user experience as a completely dedicated data center, but on a partially rented, and thus more economical, basis.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2012/06/30/the-enterprise-needs-a-better-network-to-the-cloud/feed/8Verizon upgrades network for a 100 gig worldhttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/verizon-upgrades-network-for-a-100-gig-world/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/verizon-upgrades-network-for-a-100-gig-world/#commentsTue, 13 Dec 2011 18:06:05 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=454323Long-haul networks aren’t the only pipes getting 100 gigabit upgrades these days. On Tuesday Verizon (s vz) said it is upgrading the metro networks in at least seven U.S. cities to meet the demand for broadband at the edge. Verizon’s announcement follows the launch of a 100-gigabit middle-mile network in Washington, D.C., last week, and it shows how we are closing in on the terabit age.

Verizon is putting fat Cisco CRS-3 routers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. The new gear, which will be deployed in the first half of 2012, can move up to 322 terabits per second — enough to download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in one second. These mammoth machines will be part of Verizon’s upgrade to its core FiOS network and will help deliver more bandwidth to homes, for data centers in the respective cities, to cell towers for mobile backhaul and wherever else Verizon needs it. It will also play a role in Verizon’s network evolution strategy to IPv6, the new Internet addressing system.

This represents an opportunity for players such as Ciena, (s cien) which is providing equipment for the D.C. network as well as for ADTRAN (s adtn) and private companies such as Zayo and Allied Fiber. Unlike the telecommunications boom of the late ’90s, the investment here seems to be matching up with real demand. Of course, I doubt we would have made it this far without all of that investment and dark fiber to kick things off in terms of building bandwidth-heavy applications.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/verizon-upgrades-network-for-a-100-gig-world/feed/3D.C. gets 100 gigabit network, maybe politicos will finally get broadbandhttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/d-c-gets-100-gigabit-network-maybe-politicos-will-finally-get-broadband/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/d-c-gets-100-gigabit-network-maybe-politicos-will-finally-get-broadband/#commentsWed, 07 Dec 2011 19:34:27 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=451106Washington D.C. went live with the first link of a 100-gigabit network Wednesday. The new network, called the D.C. Community Access Network (DC-CAN), will provide links out to communities east of the Anacostia River, but the ultra-high-speed network will soon serve the entire District.

Unlike what Google is building in Kansas City, this isn’t crazy-fast fiber to the home; it’s a city-owned, middle mile, network link other providers can tap into in order to deliver faster broadband to homes and businesses. The 100-gigabit fiber network will connect out to the big long-haul networks run by Level 3 Communications (s lvlt) and other providers, offering a way for existing or new ISPs to connect to the larger web. In many areas, these middle mile links are owned by AT&T (s T) and Verizon (s vz), and it can be expensive, difficult or impossible to connect out to them.

So while the network may not seem fabulous today, it most decidedly could be. Already, 24 community anchor institutions such as libraries, schools and other municipal buildings are connected to the 100-gig network. As the network expands, the city hopes to link up to 199 more. And having a low-cost, middle mile network could entice other service providers to hook up D.C. homes and businesses with faster broadband access. The network was funded in part by federal broadband stimulus funds and is expected to be complete by 2013.

While many of the nation’s politicians don’t live in D.C. proper, I would love for this type of network to act as a showcase for how important the Internet can be for the average citizen. In many ways, it seems like the Web and technology industry speak a completely different language than politicos. Perhaps better broadband could help bridge that gap.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/d-c-gets-100-gigabit-network-maybe-politicos-will-finally-get-broadband/feed/7Huawei, Corning test 100G over 3,000 kilometershttp://gigaom.com/2011/11/15/huawei-corning-test-100g-over-3000-kilometers/
http://gigaom.com/2011/11/15/huawei-corning-test-100g-over-3000-kilometers/#commentsTue, 15 Nov 2011 16:21:49 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=439465Not to be left behind by rivals Infinera (s INFR) and Ciena (s CIEN), Huawei of China and Corning (s GLW), (a company known for making optical cables and glass for televisions, phones and tablets) have conducted a 3,000 km Ultra Long-Haul (ULH) transmission of 100G coherent Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. The test was done at the Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, Georgia.

At the event, Huawei demonstrated the latest 100 Gbps single wavelength coherent technology and is also demonstrating co-transmission with its 40 Gbps coherent solutions at 50 GHz channel spacing.

“Coherent technology actually makes 100 Gbps cheaper than non-coherent, though for now it is more costly because it’s a newer technology. With coherent, think of it as a light beam with all of the light tightly aligned, but with non-coherent, the light would be more diffused. The coherent beam would look like a pen light if you shined it at the moon; the non-coherent would be like a flash light. Coherent reduces the need for amplification and increases the distance. It reduces chromatic dispersion, so you can have wavelengths set closer together, and you would need fewer sub-channels.”

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/11/15/huawei-corning-test-100g-over-3000-kilometers/feed/1Verizon Delivers 100G Speeds to U.S. Internet Backbonehttp://gigaom.com/2011/03/30/verizon-delivers-100g-speeds-to-u-s-internet-backbone/
Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:17:49 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=323711Unlike the cap and congestion crowd, Verizon Communications keeps upgrading its network planning for the upcoming cloud and streaming era. Verizon (s vz) plans to upgrade backbone pipes to 100 Gigabit per second capacity along select U.S. routes by the second quarter of this year. The network segments include Chicago to New York, Sacramento, Calif. to Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Kansas City, Kan. and follow similar upgrades made in Europe this year.

We are rapidly progressing to a 100 Gigabit world. As companies put more of their computing in the cloud, reducing latency and adding capacity through faster backbone speeds is essential. On the consumer side the adoption of video streaming, interactive gaming and video chat will also put pressure on the backbone networks as more bits traverse the web. Verizon’s consumer fiber efforts or cloud computing business can’t sustain high speeds at the edge without capacity at the core, so that’s what these upgrades are about.

Moving to 100G enables Verizon to increase bandwidth efficiency on its existing fiber infrastructure. By installing new equipment on the network while retaining use of the current fiber system, the company can carry up to 10 times the amount of network traffic carried on a standard route. Optical efficiencies also are gained from carrying traffic on a single 100G wavelength as opposed to 10 wavelengths, each operating at 10 gigabits per second. Verizon’s rollout of 100G in the U.S. will use Juniper Networks’ routers and Ciena’s 100G coherent optical transport solution (check out the video on this from 2008!). Verizon also used Juniper (s jnpr) and Ciena (s cien) equipment for its 100G deployment in Europe earlier this year.

]]>We Will Soon Live in a 100 Gbps Worldhttp://gigaom.com/2011/02/22/we-will-soon-live-in-a-100-gbps-world/
http://gigaom.com/2011/02/22/we-will-soon-live-in-a-100-gbps-world/#commentsTue, 22 Feb 2011 16:21:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=300543Thanks to iPhones (s aapl), tablets and Netflix (s nflx), the demand for bandwidth is back, and that’s drumming up interest in expanding and building out fiber networks. Today we think 1 Gbps fiber networks are enough, but soon we’ll need 100 Gbps, and a host of infrastructure companies are gearing up to provide it. Unnoticed by Silicon Valley, telecom is on the move again.

Equipment and network companies such as Ciena (s cien) and Adtran (s adtn) are reaping the rewards in their stock prices: Ciena’s stock has risen more than $14.74, or 117 percent in the last six months, while Adtran’s has risen by $14.46 — or 47 percent. Other industry players such as Infinera (s infn) and Tellabs (s tlab), however, have seen their stock prices fall. But Infinera is about to announce new products aimed at ushering in “The Terabit Age,” which may offer a boost. Corning (s glw), which provides the actual glass that goes into the ground for fiber networks, has seen its share prices rise by $6.70, or almost 42 percent, in the last six months.

Meanwhile, cloud computing and connecting data centers to faster and fatter networks has led to a new round of investment in fiber providers. From Allied Fiber –which launched last year — building a new type of network that combines the pipe with the processing capacity at data centers along the fiber pathways, to GE Capital providing $230 million in available credit to Lightower Fiber Networks, a dark fiber provider that has purchased three different fiber companies in the last six months.

“[T]here is a need to increase deployments of higher speed optical wavelengths such as 40 and 100 gigabit. We, therefore, raised our forecast and now project that in the total WDM market, which includes both metro and long haul, 40 gigabit wavelength shipments will grow at a CAGR of over 40 percent and the recently available 100 gigabit wavelengths will grow at a CAGR over 200 percent. By 2015, the combined 40 and 100 gigabit wavelengths may contribute up to $4.7 billion of optical revenue.”

Fiber Inside the Cloud

As fiber between data centers makes wired networks faster, the onus is on the networking providers inside data centers to boost their speeds. This means innovations such as Fujitsu’s creating of an all-optical switch that will keep packets that come into the network at light speed in their optical format as long as possible before converting them to electronic signals. This keeps the packets whizzing around the network faster and saves on energy because the signals aren’t converted.

Obviously, as interconnect technologies such as Intel’s (s intc) Light Peak and all-optical chips advance, the future computing and web world will be based on light as opposed to circuits, but that’s further out than I’m willing to go here. For now, the rise of fiber is occurring in the ground and will soon reach the switches inside data centers.

Fiber will also play a role in wired broadband for municipalities. Last week, the FCC issued a National Broadband Map that showed how lacking many hospitals, schools and libraries are in the U.S., with two-thirds of schools not having access to 25 Mbps or higher connections. Joe Freddoso, president and CEO of the North Carolina MCNC, a non-profit fiber network serving universities, told me demand at universities increases by up to 20 percent a year. Right now, his network “is barely scratching the surface” of its 40 Gbps capacity, but he estimates that by the end of this decade, the network will need 200 Gbps capacity.

The Mobile Ecosystem: Fiber on the Run

Wired communities aren’t the only consumer demand driving faster fiber (also known as more wavelengths). Mobile operators are seeking faster backhaul to support their 4G networks. Two weeks ago, I talked to Stefaan Vanhastel, director of product marketing from Alcatel-Lucent (s alu), who said the company’s 10 Gbps technology is aimed more at mobile operators than residential consumers. That makes sense given that LTE networks of today are seeking to provide speeds of up to 12 Gbps, while those of tomorrow may provide 10 times that amount. Once a bunch of individuals at a cell site are sharing those speeds, the pipe taking the traffic back to the larger web has to grow as well. From a DB research note issued this morning:

Carriers are looking to pull fiber to all of their base stations, and 1GB systems may not be sufficient. This is good news for Ciena who remains in the lead for supplying 100GB and OTN systems. More 1GB and above base stations means more traffic and this should be lead to solid demand for Cisco’s and Juniper’s carrier business.

Indeed, Cisco’s ASR-9000 router (s csco), introduced in 2009 to deliver terabytes of capacity at the edge, has seen a lot of success despite naysayers questioning the need for that much bandwidth. This latest fiber build out is showing how we’re taking advantage of connectivity to improve our products and our lives. As a platform for innovation we still have a long way to go with broadband and we’re going to need a lot more bandwidth to do it.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/02/22/we-will-soon-live-in-a-100-gbps-world/feed/14e-Book Echo: Consumers Fight Back; ASUS Reader Cominghttp://gigaom.com/2010/01/17/e-book-echo-consumers-fight-back-asus-reader-coming/
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/17/e-book-echo-consumers-fight-back-asus-reader-coming/#commentsSun, 17 Jan 2010 22:03:19 +0000http://jkontherun.com/?p=54211Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. Publishers are learning the hard way that consumers are willing to pay for what they want, and more importantly they don’t like for companies to push them around. That’s what consumers felt was happening when a number of publishers recently stated they would delay the release of e-book versions of best sellers in an attempt to get consumers to buy the expensive hardcover books instead. This is nothing new, having purchased e-books for a decade I can remember when e-book versions of top sellers followed the paper versions by months. What is new is how consumers are fighting back. A few publishers, HarperCollins among them, have seen a number of their books get stuck with one-star reviews on Amazon to mark displeasure at the delay of the Kindle version.

The folks that gave us the netbook are preparing to enter what is becoming a crowded field of e-book readers. The ASUS DR-570 will have a 6-inch screen and the company is claiming it will provide 122 hours of reading on a battery charge. While Eee-Reader sounds better than DR-570, ASUS is raising the bar by including a color OLED screen, and the integrated 3G and Wi-Fi will come in handy to get Flash content that can be played. There is no word on what this jewel might cost.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2010/01/17/e-book-echo-consumers-fight-back-asus-reader-coming/feed/9What's Left of Nortel Today?http://gigaom.com/2009/12/30/whats-left-of-nortel-today/
http://gigaom.com/2009/12/30/whats-left-of-nortel-today/#commentsWed, 30 Dec 2009 17:25:56 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=88695Ciena (s cien) today announced that it had jumped all of the regulatory hurdles in its $769 million buy for the metro Ethernet assets of Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, bringing the company’s year-long dismemberment through the bankruptcy courts closer to the end. According to a Nortel spokeswoman, the company has some patents and its joint venture with LG Electronics left.

July 28: Nortel gets court approval to sell its CDMA business and LTE Access assets to Ericsson (s eric) for $1.13 billion after some drama involving a bid by Research in Motion (s rimm), the maker of the BlackBerry. Nokia (s nok) Siemens (s si) Network was also a potential bidder. The deal is completed on Nov. 13.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2009/12/30/whats-left-of-nortel-today/feed/8Ciena Buys Growth With Nortel Metro Ethernet Dealhttp://gigaom.com/2009/11/23/ciena-buys-growth-with-nortel-metro-ethernet-deal/
http://gigaom.com/2009/11/23/ciena-buys-growth-with-nortel-metro-ethernet-deal/#commentsMon, 23 Nov 2009 15:18:54 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=82143Ciena (s cien) today beat out Nokia (S NOK) Siemens (S SI) Network to buy bankrupt Nortel’s metro Ethernet business for $769 million, winning the bidding war for the assets that it began in October. A court will still have to approve the deal that will see Ciena, which makes fiber optical equipment, pay $530 million in cash and issue $239 million in debt that will be due in 2017. The transaction will more than double Ciena’s sales when it closes in the first quarter of 2010.

Ciena reported fiscal 2008 sales of $902.4 million (it’s fiscal year ends Oct. 31). Sales for the first three quarters of fiscal 2009 were hit hard by the macroeconomic decline that began in September of 2008, and have totaled $476.3 million. The Nortel assets generated $1.36 billion in revenue for the Canadian company in 2008 and $556 million in the first six months of 2009, so Ciena is taking on a huge integration with this deal, which could more than double its sales and total employees (it’s expected to make job offers to at least 2,000 Nortel employees).